(2025, Taipei, 67')
Tsai Ming-liang brings to the screen an intimate and personal story: when his loyal collaborator Anong Houngheuangsy returns to Laos, the director decides to follow him, carrying only a camera. Described by Tsai himself as a “one-man film,” Back Home captures the director observing unfamiliar spaces, the buildings that punctuate the landscape, and the homes of its inhabitants. Without dialogue and using only fixed shots of the surrounding world, the film delicately and emotionally portrays the protagonist’s return home.
Born in 1957, Tsai Ming-liang is a Malaysian-born director and screenwriter naturalized in Taiwan. At the age of twenty, he moved to Taiwan to study theatre and cinema in Taipei. In 1994, he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with Vive l’amour (Ai qing wan sui), a portrait of Taipei youth in the 1990s, marked by urban solitude and suffering, while The River (He liu, 1997) received the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. One of the leading figures of Taiwan’s New Cinema, which emerged in the early 1990s, Tsai is known for long takes, fixed shots, and a contemplative rhythm. Often lacking a soundtrack, his films feature minimal dialogue, giving the image a central role.